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Who

Och is the founder and senior managing member of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group. He became a billionaire in 2007 when his hedge fund went public.

Backstory

Wharton grad Och joined Goldman's famed risk arbitrage group in 1982, honing his trading skills under the department's chief, Bob Rubin, and working alongside such future hedge fund superstars as Richard Perry and Eddie Lampert. By the early 1990s, Och was running Goldman's proprietary trading group, but he left the firm in 1994 to head out on his own. With a $100 million grubstake from the Ziff Brothers—Dirk, Robert, and Daniel, the heirs to the Ziff Davis publishing fortune established by their grandfather—Och founded Och-Ziff Capital Management. Today the publicly-traded company has some $30 billion under management.

Of note

Like many hedge funds, Och-Ziff went into expansion mode prior to the market downturn in 2007: Once primarily an arbitrage fund, Och later branched out into distressed investing, buyouts and real estate. The fund expanded accordingly—it had $5 billion under management in 2002, but the figure grew six-fold by early 2007—although Och's performance didn't necessarily follow suit. (Annual returns were comparable to the S&P.) Och's sluggish performance became a topic of conversation in 2007 when he announced plans to take Och-Ziff public, hot on the heels of successful initial public offerings by the likes of Fortress Investment Group and the Blackstone Group; more chatter followed Och's decision to sell a 10 percent stake in the fund to Dubai Capital for $1.3 billion. Alas, the global credit crisis hasn't been a boon to Och-Ziff shareholders or investors. The stock is underwater, all four of Och-Ziff's funds were down for the first quarter of 2008, and there have been persistent rumors that investors are withdrawing money from the funds.

Keeping score

Och was worth more than $4.5 billion the day after Och-Ziff Capital went public and he earned some $570 million in 2007, according to Forbes. With the company's stock price far below the IPO price, though, Och has seen his net worth dive since then. Forbes estimated his worth at $3.9 billion in 2008.

Board game

Och is a member of the board of the Wall Street division of UJA, the AJC, the Birthright Israel Foundation, and the Robin Hood Foundation, where he sits alongside fellow finance big wigs Lloyd Blankfein, Paul Tudor Jones, Glenn Dubin, Dick Fuld and Stevie Cohen, among others.

Personal

Och and his wife, Jane, own a home in Scarsdale that they purchased for $2.3 million in 2004. The couple recently picked up an apartment at 15 Central Park West; their neighbors in the building include Sandy Weill, Lloyd Blankfein, Dan Loeb, and Bob Costas. The Ochs spend vacations in Aspen at a home they purchased for $4.7 million in 2004.